It was a rainy morning when the Lindores went away. They were not rich enough to command all the delights of the London season, and had no house in town, nor any position to keep up which demanded their presence. The Earls of Lindores were merely Scotch lords. They had no place in Parliament, no importance in the realm. Hitherto a succession of unobtrusive but proud country gentlemen, not fond of appearing where their claims were not fully recognised, had borne the name, and contented themselves with their dignity at home, which no one questioned, if perhaps it was never very reverentially regarded. It was enough to them to make a visit to London now and then, to comment upon the noise and bigness of town, to attend a levee and a drawing-room, and to come home well pleased that they had no need to bind themselves to the chariot-wheels of fashion. The late Earl had been entirely of this mind; and the consequence was, that nobody in these busy circles which call themselves Society knew anything about the Lindores. But the present bearer of these honours was of a very different intention. It galled him to be so little though he was so much—the representative of a great race (in his own thinking), and yet nobody, made of no account among his own class. Perhaps Lord Lindores thought all the more of his position that it had not come to him in easy natural succession, but by right of a great family catastrophe, and after his life had been long settled on a different and much humbler basis. It is certain that he had no mind to accept it as his predecessors had done. He meant to vindicate a position for himself, to assert his claim among the best. What he intended in his heart was to turn his old Scotch earldom into a British peerage by hook or crook, and in the meantime to get himself elected a representative peer of Scotland, and attain the paradise of hereditary legislatorship by one means or another. This was his determination, and had been so from the moment when the family honours came to him. In the very afternoon of the solemn day when he heard of the death of his brother, and his own entirely unlooked-for elevation, this is what he resolved upon. He had withdrawn to his own room to be alone—to consider the wonderful revolution which had taken place, and, if he could, to expend a tear upon the three ended lives which had opened up that position to him—when this intention first rose in his mind. As a matter of fact, he had been sad enough. The extinction of these lives, the transference to himself of the honours which, for aught he knew, might be taken from him to-morrow, was too startling to be otherwise than sad. He had retired within himself, he had compelled himself to think of the poor boy Rintoul dead in his bloom, of the heart-broken father who had followed him to the grave, and to represent to himself, with all the details most likely to move the heart, that terrible scene. And he had been satisfied to feel that he was sad,—that the natural woefulness of this spectacle had moved him enough even to counterbalance the tremor and elation of this extraordinary turn of fortune. But his very sadness and overwhelming sense of a visible fate working in the history of his family, gave him an impulse which was not ungenerous. On the instant, even while he solicited the moisture in his eyes to come the length of a tear, the thought leapt into his mind that if he was spared, if he had time to do anything, it should not be merely a Scotch earldom that he would transmit to his son. At last Lindores had come into the possession of one who knew what he wanted, and meant to obtain it. His family, which had suffered so much, should no longer be pushed aside among the titled nobodies. It should have its weight in the councils of the sovereign and in the history of the kingdom. "The house shall not suffer because I have come to the head of it," he cried. He felt that he could compensate it for the series of misfortunes it had endured, by adding importance and dignity to the name. He made up his mind, then, that when his son succeeded him it should be as a peer of the realm. And it was to this end and with this inspiration that so great a change had come upon him. For this he had set his heart upon making his county a model for every shire in England. To this end he had determined to wrest the seat from the Tory representative, and put in his son in the Liberal interest. A seat so important gained, an influence so great established, what Ministry could refuse to the representative of one of the oldest families in the North the distinction which ought to have been his long before?
Nobody suspected the Earl's meaning in its fullest extent. Old Miss Barbara Erskine was the only one who had partly divined him; but of all the people who did not understand his intention, the wife of his bosom was the first. To her high mind, finely unsuspicious because so contemptuous of mean motives, this little ambition would perhaps have seemed pettier than it really was; for if nobility is worth having at all, surely it is best to possess all its privileges. And perhaps, had Lady Lindores been less lofty in her ideal, her husband would have been more disposed to open his inmost thoughts to her, and thus correct any smaller tendency. It was this that had made him insist upon Carry's marriage. He wanted to ally himself with the richest and most powerful people within his reach, to strengthen himself in every way, extending the family connection so that he should have every security for success when the moment came for his great coup. And he was anxiously alive to every happy chance that might occur for the two of his children who were still to marry—anxious yet critical. He would not have had Rintoul marry a grocer's daughter for her hogsheads, as Miss Barbara said. He would have him, if possible, to marry the daughter of a Minister of State, or some other personage of importance. He intended Rintoul to be a popular Member of Parliament, a rising man altogether, thinking he could infuse enough of his own energy as well as ambition into the young man to secure these ends. And this great aim of his was the reason why he underwent the expense of a season, though a short one, in town. He was of opinion that it was important to keep himself and his family in the knowledge of the world, to make it impossible for any fastidious fashionable to say, "Who is Lord Lindores?" The Earl, by dint of nursing this plan in his mind, and revealing it to nobody, had come to think it was a great aim.
It was, as we have said, a rainy morning when the family left Lindores. They made the journey from Edinburgh to London by night, as most people do. But before they reached Edinburgh, there was a considerable journey, and those two ferries, of which Rolls had reminded Colonel Barrington. Two great firths to cross, with no small amount of sea when the wind is in the east, was no such small matter. Lady Caroline had driven over in the morning to bid her mother good-bye, and it was she who was to deposit Nora Barrington at Chiefswood, where her next visit was to be paid. There had been but little conversation between the mother and daughter on the subject of that scene which Edith had witnessed, but Lady Lindores could not forbear a word of sympathy in the last half-hour they were to spend together. They were seated in her dressing-room, which was safe from interruption. "I do not like to leave you, my darling," Lady Lindores said, looking wistfully into her daughter's pale face.
"It does not matter, mother. Oh, you must not think of me, and spoil your pleasure. I think perhaps things go better sometimes when I have no one to fall back upon," said poor Lady Caroline.
"Oh, Carry, my love, what a thing that is to say!"
Carry did not make any reply at first. She was calm, not excited at all. "Yes; I think perhaps I am more patient, more resigned, when I have no one to fall back upon. There is no such help in keeping silence as when you have no one to talk to," she added, with a faint smile.
Her mother was much more disturbed in appearance than she. She was full of remorse as well as sympathy. "I did not think—I never knew it was so bad as this," she said, faltering, holding in her own her child's thin hands.
"What could it be but as bad as this?" said Carry. "We both must have known it from the beginning, mother. It is of no use saying anything. I spoke to Edith the other day because she came in the midst of it, and I could not help myself. It never does any good to talk. When there is no one to speak to, I shall get on better, you will see."
"In that case, it is best for us to be away from you——Carry, my darling!" Lady Lindores was frightened by the wild energy with which her daughter suddenly clutched her arm.
"Oh no, no! don't think that. If I could not look across to Lindores and think there was some one there who loved me, I should go out of my senses. Don't let us talk of it. How curious to think you are going away where I used always to wish to go—to London! No, don't look so. I don't think I have the least wish to go now. There must be ghosts there—ghosts everywhere," she said, with a sigh, "except at home. There are no ghosts at Tinto; that is one thing I may be thankful for."
"I don't think," said her mother, with an attempt to take a lighter tone, "that London is a likely place for ghosts."
"Ah, don't you think so? Mother," said Carry suddenly, "I am afraid of John Erskine. He never knew of what happened—after. What so likely as that he might have people to stay with him—people from town?"
"Nobody—whose coming would make any difference to us—would accept such an invitation, Carry. Of that you may be sure."
"Do you think so, mother?" she said; then added, with some wistfulness, "But perhaps it might be thought that no one would mind. That must be the idea among people who know. And there might be, you know, a little curiosity to see for one's self how it was. I think I could understand that without any blame."
"No, I do not think so—not where there was any delicacy of mind. It would not happen. A chance meeting might take place anywhere else; but here, in our own country, oh no, no!"
"You think so?" said Lady Caroline: perhaps there was a faint disappointment as well as relief in her tone. "I do not know how or why, but I am afraid of John Erskine," she said again, after a pause.
"My dearest! he brings back old associations."
"It is not that. I feel as if there was something new, some other trouble, coming in his train."
"You were always fanciful," her mother said; "and you are feverish, Carry, and nervous. I don't like to leave you. I wish there could be some one with you while we are away. You would not ask Nora?"
"I am better without company," she said, shaking her head. "In some houses guests are always inconvenient. One never knows—and indeed, things go better when we are alone. Don't vex yourself about me. There is the carriage. And one thing more—take care of Edith, mother dear."
"Of Edith? But surely! she will be my constant companion. Why do you say take care of Edith, Carry?"
"I think I have a kind of second-sight—or else it is my nerves, as you say. I feel as if there were schemes about Edith. My father will want her—to marry,—that is quite right, I suppose; and in town she will see so many people. I am like an old raven, boding harm. But you will stand by her, mother, whatever happens?"
"Oh, Carry, my darling, don't reproach me!" cried her mother; "it breaks my heart!"
"Reproach you! Oh, not for the world! How could I reproach my dearest friend—always my best support and comfort? No, no, mamma—no, no. It is only that I am silly with sorrow to see you all go away. And yet I want you to go away, to get all the pleasure possible. But only, if anything should happen,—if Edith should—meet any one—you will be sure to stand by her, mamma?"
"Are you ready? Are you coming? The carriage is waiting," said Lord Lindores at the door.
Carry gave a little start at the sound of his voice, and her mother rose hastily, catching up a shawl from the sofa on which she had been sitting—a sort of excuse for a moment's delay. "Let me see that we have got everything," she said, hurriedly; and coming back, took her daughter once more into her arms. "Take care of yourself—oh, take care of yourself, my darling! and if you should want me—if it should prove too much—if you find it more than you can bear——"
"I can bear anything for a month," said Lady Caroline, with a smile; "and I tell you, things go better—and you will be all the better of forgetting me for a while, mother dear."
"As if that were possible, Carry!"
"No, no; thank God, it is not possible! But I shall do very well, and you will not have my white face for ever before your eyes. There is my father calling again. Good-bye, mother dear—good-bye!" and as they kissed, Carry breathed once more that prayer, "Take care of Edith!"—in which Lady Lindores read the most tender and heartrending of all reproaches—in her mother's ear.
They drove to the little station, a large party. Lady Caroline, who was the element of care and sadness in it, made an effort to cast her troubles behind her for the sake of the travellers. As they all walked about on the little platform waiting the arrival of the slow-paced local train, it was she who looked the most cheerful—so cheerful, that her mother and sister, not unwilling to be deceived, could scarcely believe that this was the same being who had been "silly with sorrow" to part from them. Between Lord Lindores and his daughter there had always been a certain shadow and coldness since her marriage; but to-day, even he seemed to miss the tacit reproach in her look, and to feel at his ease with Carry. Before the train arrived, John Erskine, too, appeared on the platform to say good-bye to his friends. John was by far the most downcast of the party. "I shall vegetate till you come back," he said to Lady Lindores, not venturing to look at Edith, who listened to him with a smile all the same, mocking his sentiment. She was not afraid of anything he could say at that moment.
"Come and meet us this day month," she said, "and let us see if you are in leaf or blossom, Mr Erskine."
John gave her a reproachful glance. He did not feel in the humour even to answer with a compliment—with a hint that the sunshine which encourages blossom would be veiled over till she came back, though some loverlike conceit of the kind had floated vaguely through his thoughts. When the travellers disappeared at last, the three who remained were left standing forlorn on the platform, flanked by the entire strength of the station (one man and a boy, besides the stationmaster), which had turned out to see his lordship and her ladyship off. They looked blankly at each other, as those who are left behind can scarcely fail to do. Nora was the only one who kept up a cheerful aspect. "It is only for a month, after all," she said, consoling her companions. But Carry dropped back in a moment out of her false courage, and John looked black as a thunder-cloud at the well-meant utterance. He was so rude as to turn his back upon the comforter, giving Lady Caroline his arm to take her to her carriage. With her he was in perfect sympathy—he even gave her hand a little pressure in brotherly kindness and fellow-feeling: there was nothing to be said in words. Neither did she say anything to him; but she gave him a grateful glance, acknowledging that mute demonstration. At this moment the stillness which had fallen round the little place, after the painful puffing off of the train, was interrupted by the sound of horse's hoofs, and Torrance came thundering along on his black horse. Lady Caroline made a hurried spring into the carriage, recognising the sound, and hid herself in its depths before her husband came up.
"Holloa!" he cried. "Gone, are they! I thought I should have been in time to say good-bye. But there are plenty of you without me. Why, Car, you look as if you had buried them all, both you and Erskine. What's the matter? is she going to faint?"
"I never faint," said Lady Caroline, softly, from the carriage window. "I am tired a little. Nora, we need not wait now."
"And you look like a dead cat, Erskine," said the civil squire. "It must have been a tremendous parting, to leave you all like this. Hey! wait a moment; don't be in such a hurry. When will you come over and dine, and help Lady Car to cheer up a bit? After this she'll want somebody to talk to, and she don't appreciate me in that line. Have we anything on for Tuesday, Car, or will that suit?"
"Any day that is convenient for Mr Erskine," said Carry, faltering, looking out with pitiful deprecation and a sort of entreaty at John standing by. Her wistful eyes seemed to implore him not to think her husband a brute, yet to acknowledge that he was so all the same.
"Then we'll say Tuesday," said Torrance. "Come over early and see the place. I don't suppose you have so many invitations that you need to be asked weeks in advance. But don't think I am going to cheat you of your state dinner. Oh, you shall have that in good time, and all the old fogeys in the county. In the meantime, as you're such old friends, it's for Lady Car I'm asking you now." This was said with a laugh which struck John's strained nerves as the most insolent he had ever heard.
"I need not say that I am at Lady Caroline's disposition—when she pleases," he replied, very gravely.
"Oh, not for me—not for me," she cried, under her breath. Then recovering herself—"I mean—forgive me; I was thinking of something else. On Tuesday, if you will come, Mr Erskine—it will be most kind to come. And, Nora, you will come too. To Chiefswood," she said, as the servant shut the door, falling back with a look of relief into the shelter of the carriage. The two men stood for a moment looking after it as it whirled away. Why they should thus stand in a kind of forced antagonism, John Erskine, at least, did not know. The railway forces looked on vaguely behind; and Torrance, curbing his impatient horse, made a great din and commotion on the country road.
"Be quiet, you brute! We didn't bargain for Nora—eh, Erskine? she's thrown in," said Torrance, with that familiarity which was so offensive to John. "To be sure, three's no company, they say. It's a pity they play their cards so openly—or rather, it's a great thing for you, my fine fellow. You were put on your guard directly, I should say. I could have told them, no man was ever caught like that—and few men know better than I do all the ways of it," he said, with a laugh.
"You have the advantage of me," said Erskine, coldly. "I don't know who is playing cards, or what I have to do with them. Till Tuesday—since I have Lady Caroline's commands," he said, lifting his hat.
"Confound——" the other said, under his breath; but John had already turned away. Torrance stared after him, with a doubt in his eyes whether he should not pursue and pick a quarrel on the spot; but a moment's reflection changed his plans. "I'll get more fun out of him yet before I'm done with him," he said, half to himself. Then he became aware of the observation of Sandy Struthers the porter and the boy who had formed the background, and were listening calmly to all that was said. He turned round upon them quickly. "Hey, Sandy! what's wrong, my man? Were you waiting to spy upon Mr Erskine and me?"
"Me—spying! No' me; what would I spy for?" was the porter's reply. He was too cool to be taken by surprise. "What's that to me if twa gentlemen spit and scratch at ilk ither, like cats or women folk," he said, slowly. He had known Tinto "a' his days," and was not afraid of him. A porter at a little roadside station may be pardoned if he is misanthropical. He did not even change his position, as a man less accustomed to waiting about with his hands hanging by his side might have done.
"You scoundrel! how dare you talk of spitting and scratching to me?"
"'Deed, I daur mair than that," said Sandy, calmly. "You'll no' take the trouble to complain to the Directors, Tinto, and I'm feared for naebody else. But you shouldna quarrel—gentlemen shouldna quarrel. It sets a bad example to the country-side."
"Quarrel! nothing of the sort. That's your imagination. I was asking Mr Erskine to dinner," said Tinto, with his big laugh.
"Weel, it looked real like it. I wouldna gang to your dinner, Tinto, if you asked me like that."
"Perhaps you wouldn't take a shilling if I tossed it to you like that."
"It's a'thegither different," said Sandy, catching the coin adroitly enough. "I see nae analogy atween the twa. But jist take you my advice and quarrel nane, sir, especially with that young lad: thae Erskines are a dour race."
"You idiot! I was asking him to dinner," Torrance said. He was on friendly terms with all the common people, with a certain jocular roughness which did not displease them. Sandy stood imperturbable, with all the calm of a man accustomed to stand most of his time looking on at the vague and quiet doings of the world about him. Very little ever happened about the station. To have had a crack with Tinto was a great entertainment after the morning excitement, enough to maintain life upon for a long time, of having helped the luggage into the van, and assisted my lord and my lady to get away.
"I wish," cried Nora, as they rolled along the quiet road, "that you would not drag me in wherever John Erskine is going, Car!"
They all called him John Erskine. It was the habit of the neighbourhood, from which even strangers could scarcely get free.
"I drag you in! Ah, see how selfish we are without knowing!" said Carry. "I thought only that between Mr Torrance and myself—there would be little amusement."
"Amusement!" cried Nora—"always amusement! Is that all that is ever to be thought of even at a dinner-party?"
Carry was too serious to take up this challenge. "Dear Nora," she said, "I am afraid of John Erskine, though I cannot tell you why. I think Mr Torrance tries to irritate him: he does not mean it,—but they are so different. I know by my own experience that sometimes a tone, a look—which is nothing, which means nothing—will drive one beside one's self. That is why I would rather he did not come; and when he comes, I want some one—some one indifferent—to help me to make it seem like a common little dinner—like every day."
"Is it not like every day? Is there—anything? If you want me, Carry, of course there is not a word to be said." Nora looked at her with anxious, somewhat astonished eyes. She, too, was aware that before Carry's marriage—before the family came to Lindores—there had been some one else. But if that had been John, how then did it happen that Edith——Nora stopped short, confounded. To her young imagination the idea, not so very dreadful a one, that a man who had loved one sister might afterwards console himself with another, was a sort of sacrilege. But friendship went above all.
"I do not think I can explain it to you, Nora," said Lady Caroline. "There are so many things one cannot explain. Scarcely anything in this world concerns one's very self alone and nobody else. That always seems to make confidences so impossible."
"Never mind confidences," cried Nora, wounded. "I did not ask why. I said if you really wanted me, Carry——"
"I know you would not ask why. And there is nothing to tell. Mr Torrance has had a mistaken idea. But it is not that altogether. I am frightened without any reason. I suppose it is as my mother says, because of all the old associations he brings back. Marriage is so strange a thing. It cuts your life in two. What was before seems to belong to some one else—to another world."
"Is it always so, I wonder?" said Nora, wistfully.
"So far as I know," Carry said.
"Then I think St Paul is right," cried the girl, decisively, "and that it is not good in that case to marry; but never mind, if you want me. There is nothing to be frightened about in John Erskine. He is nice enough. He would not do anything to make you uncomfortable. He is not ill-tempered nor ready to take offence."
"I did not know that you knew him so well, Nora."
"Oh yes—when you have a man thrust upon you as he has been—when you have always heard of him all your life; when people have said for years,—in fun, you know, of course, but still they have said it—'Wait till you see John Erskine!'"
Nora's tone was slightly aggrieved. She could not help feeling herself a little injured that, after so much preparation and so many indications of fate, John Erskine should turn out to be nothing to her after all.
Lady Caroline listened with an eager countenance. Before Nora had done speaking, she turned upon her, taking both her hands. Her soft grey eyes widened out with anxious questions. The corners of her mouth drooped. "Nora, dear child, dear child!" she said, "you cannot mean—you do not say——"
"Oh, I don't say anything at all," cried Nora, half angry, half amused, with a laugh at herself which was about a quarter part inclined to crying. "No, of course not, Car. How could I care for him—a man I had never seen? But just—it seems so ludicrous, after this going on all one's life, that it should come to nothing in a moment. I never can help laughing when I think of it. 'Oh, wait till you see John Erskine!' Since I was fifteen everybody has said that. And then when he did appear at last, oh,—I thought him very nice—I had no objection to him—I was not a bit unwilling,—to see him calmly turn his back upon me, as he did to-day at the station!"
Nora laughed till the tears came into her eyes; but Lady Caroline, whose seriousness precluded any admixture of humour in the situation, took the younger girl in her arms and kissed her, with a pitying tenderness and enthusiasm of consolation. "My little Nora! my little Nora!" she said. She was too much moved with the most genuine emotion and sympathy to say more; at which Nora, half accepting the crisis, half struggling against it, laughed again and again till the tears rolled over her cheeks.
"Lady Car! Lady Car! it is not for sorrow; it is the fun of it—the fun of it!" she cried.
But Carry did not see the fun. She wanted to soothe the sorrow away.
"Dearest Nora, this sort of disappointment is only visionary," she said. "It is your imagination that is concerned, not your heart. Oh, believe me, dear, you will laugh at it afterwards; you will think it nothing at all. How little he knows! I shall think less of his good sense, less of his discrimination, than I was disposed to do. To think of a man so left to himself as to throw my Nora away!"
"He has not thrown me away," cried Nora, with a little pride; "because, thank heaven, he never knew that he had me in his power! But you must think more, not less, of his discrimination, Carry; for if he never had any eyes for me, it was for the excellent good reason that he had seen Edith before. So my pride is saved—quite saved," the girl cried.
"Edith!" Carry repeated after her. And then her voice rose almost to a shriek—"Edith! You cannot mean that?"
"But I do mean it. Oh, I know there will be a thousand difficulties. Lord Lindores will never consent: that is why they go and do it, I suppose. Because she was the last person he ought to have fallen in love with, as they say in the 'Critic'——"
"Edith!" repeated Carry again. Nora was half satisfied, half disappointed, to find that her own part of the story faded altogether from her friend's mind when this astonishing peace of intelligence came in. Then she whispered in an awe-stricken voice, "Does my mother know?"
"Nobody knows—not even Edith herself. I saw it because, you know——And of course," cried Nora, in delightful self-contradiction, "it does not matter at all when I meet him now; for he is not thinking of me any longer, but of her. Oh, he never did think of me, except to say to himself, 'There is that horrid girl again!'"
This time Nora's laugh passed without any notice from Carry, whose thoughts were absorbed in her sister's concerns. "Was not I right," she said, clasping her hands, "when I said I was frightened for John Erskine? I said so to my mother to-day. What I was thinking of was very different: that he might quarrel with Mr Torrance—that harm might come in that way. But oh, this is worse, far worse! Edith! I thought she at least would be safe. How short-sighted we are even in our instincts! Oh, my little sister! What can I do, Nora, what can I do to save her?"
Nora received this appeal with a countenance trembling between mirth and vexation. She did not think Edith at all to be pitied. If there was any victim—and the whole matter was so absurd that she felt it ought not to be looked at in so serious a light,—but if there was a victim, it was not Edith, but herself. She could only reply to Carry's anxiety with a renewed outbreak of not very comfortable laughter. "Save her! You forget," she said, with sudden gravity, "that Edith is not one to be saved unless she pleases. And if she should like Mr Erskine——"
"My father will kill her!" Lady Caroline cried.